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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28196463">with the perspective of starlight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentx13/pseuds/agentx13'>agentx13</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Accidental meeting, Canon Compliant, Gen, sharon carter month</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:54:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,261</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28196463</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentx13/pseuds/agentx13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Feeling overwhelmed, Sharon goes to the rooftop of her apartment building so she can think and be alone. She's not the only one.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Sharon Carter Month</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>with the perspective of starlight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sharon opens the door to the rooftop, and chilly air hits her face like an icy, ghostly slap. Her ensuing gasp makes her lungs ache. She forces herself to expel her breath in a long, hazy fog.</p><p>She steps onto the rooftop and sees that she isn’t the first one to have had this idea to hang out here. There are mismatched strings of lights and some lawn chairs scattered around. There’s some discarded rubbish. A few toys for children. A garden that looks like someone gave up on taking care of it ages ago.</p><p>She wanders around, the thick blanket heavy in her arms. In the distance, the Capitol’s dome is awash in bright light. It’s beautiful, in its own way. If she knew less about politics, she could appreciate it more. Or maybe the fact that it got done at all, despite all the politics, makes it more beautiful. She doesn’t know, and that’s not the question that’s bothering her tonight.</p><p>She finds a relatively clean spot and has just set her blanket down when the door opens again. She tenses, hoping it isn’t the neighborhood children. It ought to be too late for them to be up here. If they’re supervised, though… crap. She came up here to get away from things, not socialize. Certainly not to babysit.</p><p>Only it isn’t a kid. It’s her neighbor. One of the reasons she’d come up here.</p><p>He doesn’t look around at first, only goes to the edge of the roof. She braces to run over if he looks like he’s going to jump, but he only looks toward the Capitol, and his shoulders have that defeated set to them that he studiously avoids when other people are around.</p><p>He half-turns and freezes as he spots her.</p><p>She gives him an awkward wave. “Steve, right?”</p><p>“Right,” he says, sounding just as awkward as she feels. “Kate?”</p><p>“Right.” She waits a beat. “I was half-worried you were going to jump.” Kate would comment on that sort of thing, right? Yes. Or at least, that’s how Sharon is going to play it. Kate’s a nurse, so it probably works.</p><p>He shrugs. “This isn’t high enough to do much damage.”</p><p>That isn’t a no.</p><p>“What brings you up here?”</p><p>She looks at the blanket. “I had some thinking to do.”</p><p>He looks at the blanket. “Should I- If you have company…”</p><p>“What? No. <i>No.</i>” Jesus. “It’s, like, twenty degrees out. I wouldn’t-” She shakes her head. “And I’d prefer more privacy, and- <i>no.</i>” What the hell? Did it really look like that? She looks at the blanket anew but can’t see how anyone would want to have a nighttime liaison at three in the morning in twenty-degree weather out in the open on a blanket covering a hard and dirty rooftop.</p><p>“Sorry,” he says, sounding even more awkward. She hadn’t thought it was possible to sound more awkward, but he’s gone and done it.</p><p>She quickly sits on the blanket as if to prove her point. “No. Thinking. I just- It’s just to look at the sky.”</p><p>“The sky,” he repeats. He turns to look back at the Capitol.</p><p>“That doesn’t do anything but frustrate people,” she says, seeing where he’s looking.</p><p>“It can inspire.”</p><p>“Sure.” She lies back and stares up at the sky, the endless void of blacks and blues and purples blending into a soft richness pierced by millions of tiny bright stars. “But there are better things to be inspired by.” There’s a long pause, and her eyes slide over to see him staring upward. Again, he looks sad. “You’ll get a crick in your neck if you look like that. Come here.” She scoots aside to make room for him.</p><p>He walks nearer. “Is that your medical diagnosis?”</p><p>“That’s just common sense.”</p><p>“Common sense isn’t so-”</p><p>“Common, I know.” She waves a hand to the blanket a couple feet away, and after a moment, as if daring himself, he plops down and looks up at the sky with a sigh. “Tell me your problems seem so important now.”</p><p>He doesn’t look away from the sky above. “What makes you think I have problems?”</p><p>“No one comes to a rooftop at three in the morning unless they have problems. Unless you were planning an attack on the Capitol, in which case, can we both pretend I was never here?”</p><p>His lips twitch the faintest bit. If she weren’t looking for it, she wouldn’t have seen it. “I promise you I’m not planning on doing anything to the Capitol.”</p><p>“Good. And I’m glad that you weren’t thinking of jumping.” She looks up at the stars.</p><p>“Tough day at the hospital?”</p><p>“Bureaucracy,” Sharon says darkly. “I hate few things more.”</p><p>“I didn’t even think hospitals <i>had</i> that.”</p><p>“Healthcare is a business. You can live, but not for free.” She pauses. She’d only read some books and papers on the healthcare industry. She doesn’t think enough understanding of the ins and outs to stand up to potential scrutiny. “What about you? Working at SHIELD must be tough.” She still can’t believe that he’d told everyone here he worked with SHIELD. It might explain his physique, but he’s one of the worst liars she’s ever seen. And him working with SHIELD wasn’t even a lie, it just wasn’t the full truth.</p><p>He’s quiet. “It’s not so bad. It’s just… It doesn’t end.”</p><p>She grimaces. “Tell me about it.” She shakes her head. “Unless it’s confidential, I mean.”</p><p>He doesn’t answer right away. “It isn’t confidential. Not really. Just… it wears you down.”</p><p>She sighs. “I know the feeling. If it isn’t a calling, you’re screwed. And sometimes, even if it <i>is</i> a calling, you’re screwed.” She studies the stars, picking out some of the constellations. “I used to look at the stars when I needed a reminder when I was a kid.”</p><p>“That you wanted to be an astronaut?”</p><p>What? She glances at him in disbelief. “No.” She looks upwards again, and her voice softens. “No. We all become stardust in the end.”</p><p>He turns his head toward her but doesn’t speak. He seems confused, but he doesn’t seem like he’s about to dive headlong off the roof, so that’s something.</p><p>She intertwines her fingers over her ribs and regrets not wearing gloves. “When we die, our atoms scatter. Into our immediate surroundings, first, and then over time into the atmosphere. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. Eventually, we go out into the galaxy, a bit of a time, probably several different galaxies, and then we go even further. We become meteors and help form other planets and… well. At some point, we become stars. It’s the natural way of things.”</p><p>He turns his face back to the sky. “So I’m looking at my great-grandfather right now.”</p><p>She shouldn’t want to punch his arm so badly, even if he deserves it. “Timing’s a bit off. But eventually. He’d become stardust. You’d become stardust. We each already have a little stardust in each of us. We wouldn’t be here if meteors hadn’t carried life from other planets here.”</p><p>His eyes narrow. “When did they find that out?”</p><p>She wonders if he’ll write it down in his notebook in front of her or if he’ll wait until he’s out of sight. The fact that he doesn’t seem to realize everyone knows about the notebook is kind of cute. “Not too long ago? Definitely in the past fifty years.”</p><p>He nods to himself. Okay. Writing it down later. “Do you ever think people are lying to you?”</p><p>She looks at him in surprise. “You work with spies, I work with sick people. I imagine we both know liars.”</p><p>“No, like… Like there’s something important people aren’t telling you. Something everyone knows but you.” She tries to think of how to answer, but then he shakes his head. “Never mind.”</p><p>“Maybe they’re trying to protect you?”</p><p>“Taking someone’s choice away isn’t protecting them.”</p><p>Ouch. Does he know about her? She hopes he doesn’t know about her. She hasn’t even had this mission for a year yet. At least let her make it a year before he realizes she isn’t a nurse. “What would you do differently?”</p><p>His eyes move from star to star until he finds one his eyes can’t stray from. “I don’t know.” There’s a pause long enough for a long breath. “If you thought people were lying to you, everyone you know and trusted, if you thought they weren’t telling you something, what would you do?”</p><p>She doesn’t have to think for long. “The best I could.” She looks up at the sky. “I’d take measure of what matters most to me and then I’d try to make sure I was true to that.”</p><p>He’s quiet for a long time. “And take comfort that you could be stardust one day.”</p><p>She half-shrugs. “It takes the sting out of mortality a bit.” There’s a streak from a shooting star that lasts a blink. “The people I’ve lost, the people I can’t save… They go on. They’re still here. And one day they might help form the sun that provides another population with life. They can form the starlight that people look up to from rooftops.” She turns and manages a weak grin. “In the grand scheme of the universe, red tape only matters so much.”</p><p>“Ideals only matter so much, too, it sounds like.” His tone is grim, disappointed. Hurt. Discouraged.</p><p>“I wouldn’t say that,” she says carefully. “We all die eventually. There’s no reason to rush. At all.” Hint, hint. “Because it takes a lot of time to turn into stardust. And until then… we have each other, and we have our memories, and we have stories…” She shifts; there’s a rock under the blanket she hadn’t noticed before. “Ideals matter because <i>we</i> matter, don’t you think?”</p><p>He looks at her, his eyes clear and troubled and sincere and desperate. “Maybe they only matter to us.”</p><p>She looks back, meeting his eyes and not looking away. “If that were true, none of us would have anyone to look up to. None of us would have heroes.” She watches him for a moment. “Someone once told me we can’t attain our ideals. The nature of an ideal is that it is out of reach. But the attempt to reach it makes lives better.” Her eyes fall to the blanket between them. “I thought it was crap for a long time, honestly. They made it sound like success was unattainable. But then I realized – the pursuit <i>is</i> the success. Ideals inspire. One person can effect a lot of change. Imagine what two could do. Or two thousand.”</p><p>He turns his face back to the stars. “You think it’s worth it? Pushing toward something with no guarantee of success?”</p><p>He must be having a harder time than Fury had thought if he’s asking that.</p><p>“I do. Not just because of what it means to others, but because of what it means to us.”</p><p>He’s silent, staring up at the sky. “It’s easy to feel small like this,” he says at last.</p><p>She wonders if he hates feeling small, like he had before the serum, or maybe he still feels like that even today. “That’s kind of the point,” she admits. “Our problems are temporary. The pieces of us are eternal.” She presses her lips together. “It humbles me.” Her voice is soft, barely more than a whisper.</p><p>He looks at her curiously.</p><p>She waves a hand at the sky. “No matter what I do, it doesn’t matter in the long run. Not really. It matters, but for a very short time. The universe doesn’t see, doesn’t care.” She glares at a star. “So at the end of the day, what I do, I do for me.” She rolls her face toward him. “I hope that doesn’t sound selfish.”</p><p>“No,” he says slowly. “I think I get it. Our atoms are for the universe, our actions are for us.”</p><p>“Exactly.”</p><p>He looks back to the sky, and after a moment, she does, too.</p><p>The silence stretches; she doesn’t realize until he’s shaken her shoulder that she’s fallen asleep. She jumps to her feet and groans as her back and neck protests.</p><p>He grins at her. He’s already grabbed the blanket, and after a moment, he hands it to her, folded and ready to go. “It’s almost dawn. I wasn’t sure if you had to go to work.”</p><p>She tries to smooth down her hair; she knows it’s sticking up in the back – she knows how traitorous it can be. “Thanks.”</p><p>He looks out toward the Capitol. Overhead, the stars are hidden by the lightening sky. “No, thank <i>you.</i> I needed the perspective.”</p><p>“Anytime,” she says, a little too cheerfully. She takes a step and grunts. With a groan, she stretches a little. Shower and a coffee, she thinks to herself, and she’ll be good to go. She walks to the stairwell door. “You coming?”</p><p>He’s standing near the edge again, his hands in his pockets. “Later. Thanks for tonight.”</p><p>She holds up the blanket. “Hey, I don’t mind surprise liaisons.” Damn it, that hadn’t come out right. “No problem. It was nice.”</p><p>“It was.” He turns away, and she looks back before the door closes, still worried he might jump. But instead of looking defeated, she sees hope.</p><p>She grins to herself as she heads to her apartment. That was the thing about starlight. Such quiet, tiny things in the night sky, and yet significant of so much more.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Oof! Forgot to add this sooner! We're doing a poll to determine prompts for next year's Sharon Carter Month, so if there's something you want to see (or something you don't), please go <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1goHBjj2uGHsi5JVNTwyxcFecFHwsTkSPIbtbZKe7eQ0/edit">here!</a> Thank you!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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